Aspects of the present invention relate to document creation and editing applications or software programs operable on a computer system, and more particularly to a method, system and computer program product for scoping of operations in a document editing context.
Computer applications or software for use in creating and editing text documents are ubiquitous, and frequently include find and replace functionality in which a search for a string of characters is performed. When found, that string is replaced with another string of characters. Such traditional editing applications include Microsoft Word, Lotus Symphony, and OpenOffice. Microsoft and Word are trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries or both. Lotus Symphony is a trademark of the IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries or both. OpenOffice is a trademark of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States, other countries, or both.
Applications or software that permit concurrent or independent access and editing by more than one user, which may be referred to as collaborative or simultaneous editing, are becoming increasingly prevalent. IBM Docs and Google Docs are examples of collaborative editing software applications. IBM and IBM Docs are trademarks of the IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries or both. Google and Google Docs are trademarks of Google Inc in the United States, other countries or both. Such collaborative editing applications present an advantage generally unavailable in traditional document editing applications, in which multiple versions of documents may, by necessity, be created between users—there need only be one document to be edited in a collaborative editing application.
Accordingly, multiple authors can collaborate on a document in at least two ways: (1) by alternating editing sessions consisting of a single author, or (2) simultaneous editing by multiple authors within a single editing session. “Find” and “find and replace” functionality behaves in conventional collaborative editing as previously established in traditional editors. In neither type of editor is there a feature or method providing a more discretionary find or find and replace operation, specifically, one that is selective as to target content based on which user created the content or other criteria associated with edited content.